[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Former president of the African National Congress (ANC) youth league, Julius Malema, has lambasted the leadership of South Africa's ruling party for using him to achieve their goals and then discarding him "like a condom."E-e-e-e-w-w-w-w! Too much imagery!
Mr Malema made the accusations at a gathering of a new group called the "Friends of the Youth League" in Mthatha, South Africa's Eastern Cape Province.

The group has been created to provide a different platform for Mr Malema following the confirmation of his expulsion from the ANC, according to the City Press newspaper.

The ANC youth league has distanced itself from the new group.

Mr Malema claimed he had been mistreated by the ANC leadership despite his service to the party.

"Those of us who have remained loyal and entered treacherous places by defending the African National Congress... today we are not wanted," the South African Press Association quoted Mr Malema as saying.

[Daily Nation (Kenya)] The chief prosecutor in the trial of Charles TaylorThe former President-for-Life of Liberia, of whom the best that could be said was that he wasn't quite as horrible as Prince Johnson, at least not usually. has suggested an 80-year sentence after the Liberian former president's conviction for war crimes, according to a document made public Thursday.

The prosecutor said the term would be fair given Taylor's role in arming and aiding rebels who killed and mutilated thousands in neighbouring Sierra Leone during the 1991-2001 civil war, one of the most brutal conflicts in modern history.

"Should the trial chamber decide to impose a global sentence, 80 years imprisonment would be appropriate," said the document, signed by the Special Court for Sierra Leone's chief prosecutor Brenda Hollis in The Hague.

"The recommended sentence is appropriate to reflect the essential role that Mr Taylor played in crimes of such extreme scope and gravity."

Taylor, 64, was found guilty by the UN-backed court last week for aiding and abetting war crimes.

So he should be 144 years old when he gets out, except that this is Europe so he'll be 71...

In the first judgement against an ex-head of state by a world court since the World War II Nuremberg trials, Taylor was convicted on all 11 counts including acts of terrorism, murder and rape committed by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, who paid him for arms with diamonds mined by slave labour.

Taylor will be sentenced on May 30 by the court, based in the leafy suburb of Leidschendam outside The Hague. Should he get jail time, it will be spent in a British prison.

The hearings, which saw model Naomi Campbell testify she had received diamonds from Taylor, lasted a liesurely four years, wrapping up in March 2011.

[Bangla Daily Star] The ruling Awami League will take a tough stance if the BNP-led opposition parties enforce hartal... a peculiarly Bangla combination of a general strike and a riot, used by both major political groups in lieu of actual governance ... or observe similar anti-government agitation programmes in the coming days.

AL insiders said the party would take to the streets to curb the opposition agitation. In no circumstances, the BNP and allies would be allowed to "hamper development activities of the government".

"We will go tough against those who will try to hinder development activities. We won't spare anyone who will try to create anarchy in the name of movement," AL Organising Secretary Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury told The Daily Star yesterday.

He added that as a pro-people party, the AL would stay alert in the streets to thwart BNP's anti-government movement.

Khalid, however, said they believe "the opposition leaders who go into hiding and are not courageous enough to face charges won't be able to wage a movement to unseat this government".

The main opposition BNP has already announced that after May 6 it would take up programmes even harsher than hartal to press the government for return of its missing leader Ilias Ali, withdrawal of "false charges" against most of its top leaders and reinstatement of the caretaker government system to hold the next parliamentary election.

In last 12 days, the BNP-led 18-party alliance has enforced five dawn-to-dusk shutdowns and staged demonstrations across the country to protest the disappearance of Ilias Ali and his driver.

Ilias, one of the organising secretaries of the BNP and a former politician, went missing in the early hours of April 18.

AL high-ups claim the government has been trying its best to find out Ilias. So, they reason, there is no logic in calling hartal.

Besides, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since 1981. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide... herself has assured Ilias' wife Tahsina Rushdir Luna of doing everything necessary to trace her husband.

On the two cases filed against the BNP leaders on charges of involvement in blasts and vandalism during hartal hours, AL leaders said the senior BNP leaders must accept responsibility when one bus driver had been burned alive and many vehicles smashed or torched by hartal pickets.

The ruling party leaders also said the charges had been brought against senior opposition leaders as they had threatened to set the country on fire.

About the opposition's demand for withdrawal of the charges, AL Joint General Secretary Mahbubul Alam Hanif said, "The law will take its own course and no one is above the law."

On April 29, Tejgaon police filed a case against 44 leaders and activists of the BNP-led 18-party alliance for torching a vehicle near the Prime Minister's Office that day.

The United States supports China's bid to have the yuan included in the International Monetary Fund's basket of currencies, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan said on Friday after high-level talks between Beijing and Washington.

China wants the yuan to be part of the IMF basket of currencies as part of long-term plans to turn the yuan into an alternative reserve currency next to the dollar and the euro.

But the IMF has said a currency needs to be convertible before it can be included in the basket. China envisions the yuan will only be convertible by 2015.

Turkey's prime minister on Thursday accused ratings agency Standard & Poor's of bias for lowering the country's long-term credit outlook on the same day it upgraded Greece's credit grade.

"How dare they! Don't they know who we are!?"

S&P on Tuesday had dropped Turkey's outlook from positive to stable, which mean it is no longer considering an upgrade of its credit rating, and cited concerns over government debt. The same day it had upgraded the ratings of neighboring Greece after Athens completed a major debt writedown with private creditors.

A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.